 a tone of extreme candour and a profound unreadable
stare that went far beyond us both. And the stillness of her lips was so perfect
directly she ceased speaking that I wondered whether all this had come through
them or only had formed itself in my mind.
    Presently she continued as if speaking for herself only.
    »It's like taking the lids off boxes and seeing ugly toads staring at you.
In every one. Every one. That's what it is having to do with men more than mere
- Good morning - Good evening. And if you try to avoid meddling with their lids,
some of them will take them off themselves. And they don't even know, they don't
even suspect what they are showing you. Certain confidences - they don't see it
- are the bitterest kind of insult. I suppose Azzolati imagines himself a noble
beast of prey. Just as some others imagine themselves to be most delicate,
noble, and refined gentlemen. And as likely as not they would trade on a woman's
troubles - and in the end make nothing of that either. Idiots!«
    The utter absence of all anger in this spoken meditation gave it a character
of touching simplicity. And as if it had been truly only a meditation we
conducted ourselves as though we had not heard it. Mills began to speak of his
experiences during his visit to the army of the Legitimist King. And I
discovered in his speeches that this man of books could be graphic and
picturesque. His admiration for the devotion and bravery of the army was
combined with the greatest distaste for what he had seen of the way its great
qualities were misused. In the conduct of this great enterprise he had seen a
deplorable levity of outlook, a fatal lack of decision, an absence of any
reasoned plan.
    He shook his head.
    »I feel that you of all people, Doña Rita, ought to be told the truth. I
don't know exactly what you have at stake.«
    She was rosy like some impassive statue in a desert in the flush of the
dawn.
    »Not my heart,« she said quietly. »You must believe that.«
    »I do. Perhaps it would have been better if you ...«
    »No, Monsieur le Philosophe. It would not have been better. Don't make that
serious face at me,« she went on with tenderness in a playful note, as if
tenderness had been her inheritance of all time and playfulness the very fibre
of her being. »I suppose you think that a woman
